Chapter II (4)

To no inconsiderable extent this is America's own fault. She does not present to the world a record that is easily read. It is obvious, for instance--and so obvious that it is not often enough stated--that America has and will continue to have a fundamentally English civilization. English law is the basis of her law. English speech is her speech, and if with a difference, it is a difference that the philologist, all things considered, finds amazingly small. English literature is her literature--Chaucer and Shakespeare hers because her blood then coursed indistinguishably through the English heart they knew so well; Milton, Dryden, and the Queen Anne men hers, because she was still a part of England; the later men hers by virtue of affectionate acquaintanceship and a generous and not inconsiderable rivalry. English history, in short, is her history. The struggles of the thirteenth century through which law and parliament came into being, the struggles of the seventeenth century through which law and parliament came to rule, are America's struggles upon which she can look back with the satisfaction that some things that have been done in the world need never be undone or done over again, whatever the room for improvement may still be. Americans, no less than British, recognize that independence was largely an accidental result of a war which sprang out of a false theory of economics, but whose conclusion carried with it a lesson in the management of empire which subsequent history shows the British to have learned thoroughly and for the benefit of all concerned. American independence, however, once established, pointed a way to democratic freedom which England hastened to follow. This we know. And yet--

And yet we allow these obvious and fundamental considerations to become marvelously obscured. We allow England's failure to solve an insoluble Irish problem to arouse in us an attitude of mind possibly excusable in some Irishmen, but wholly inexcusable in any American. We allow a sentimental regard for some immigrant from Eastern Europe, who comes to us with a philosophy born of conditions that in English-speaking lands ceased to be centuries ago, to make us pretend to see in him the true expression of America's traditional ideals. We allow ourselves to be far too easy with the phrase, "He is not pro-German, he is merely anti-British." Why are they anti-British? Why should they be permitted to make it falsely appear that recognition of the English basis of America involves approval of everything that England in her history may or may not have done? Why should they be allowed to pretend that disapproval of some particular act of England justifies repudiation of most of the things by virtue of which we are what we are? America from the first has been part of the great English experiment--great because it is capable of learning from experience.

The world has put a big investment in blood and treasure, and all that they imply, into the education of England. It is satisfied--the world's response to Germany's insolent challenge is the proof of it--that its pains have been well bestowed. England is more nearly fit than any other nation to wield the power that is hers. That is not to deny the peculiar virtues of other nations; indeed, these virtues have largely contributed to the result. Italy has educated her; France has educated her; we have done something; and Germany. In result, she is not perfect--the English would perhaps least of all assert that--but she has learned a great deal and held herself steady while she learned it. It is a bigger job than the world cares to undertake to teach any other nation so much. Nor would it be at all likely to succeed so well. For what England has to offer the world in return is not simply her institutions; it is not merely a formula for the effective discharge of police duty throughout the world; it is the English freeman, whether he hail from Canada, Australia, Africa, or the uttermost isles of the sea.

A most adaptable fellow, this freeman, doing all sorts of work everywhere, and with tremendous powers of assimilation. Consider him in his origins. He began by assimilating fully his own weight in Danes, while remaining an English freeman. He then perforce accepted a Norman king, as he had accepted a Danish one, hoping, as always, that the king would not trouble him too much. But when Norman William, who was very ill-informed about the breed, killed off most of his natural leaders and harried the rest into villeiny, how did he manage in a small matter of two hundred years or so to make an English gentleman not only of himself but of all the rag-tag of adventurers who had come over with William and since? How did he contrive, out of a band of exiles fleeing from an Egypt of ecclesiastical tyranny, broken younger sons, artisans out of a job, speculators, bondmen, Swedes, Dutchmen, and what not, to make America? Is he one likely to lose his bearings when in his America the age-old problem again heaves in view? This is a job he has been working at pretty successfully for more than a thousand years. Grant him a moment to realize himself afresh in the face of it. Don't expect him to stop and give a coherent explanation of what he is doing. He wouldn't be the true son of the English tradition that he is if he could do that. Perhaps the occupants of the new chair can do something of the sort for him.

THE RUSSIAN QUARTER

_By_ THOMAS BURKE

Thomas Burke, a young newspaper man in London, came into quick
recognition with his first book, _Nights in Town_ (published in
America as _Nights in London_) in 1915. His first really popular
success, however, was _Limehouse Nights_, less satisfactory to
those who had read the first book, as it was largely a repetition
of the same material in fiction form. (In fact, Mr. Burke holds
what must be almost a record among authors by having worked over
nearly the identical substance in four different versions--as
essays and sketches, in _Nights in Town_; as short stories, in
_Limehouse Nights_; as a novel, in _Twinkletoes_; as poetry, in
_The Song Book of Quong Lee of Limehouse_.)

Mr. Burke has specialized on London, and with great ability. In the
Limehouse series his colorings seem just a little too consciously
vivid, his roguishness a little too studied, to be quite
satisfying. _The Outer Circle_, a volume of rambles in the London
suburbs, is to me more truly a work of art.

I had known the quarter for many years before it interested me. It was not until I was prowling around on a Fleet Street assignment that I learned to hate it. A murder had been committed over a café in Lupin Street; a popular murder, fruity, cleverly done, and with a sex interest. Of course every newspaper and agency developed a virtuous anxiety to track the culprit, and all resources were directed to that end. Journalism is perhaps the only profession in which so fine a public spirit may be found. So it was that the North Country paper of which I was a hanger-on flung every available man into the fighting line, and the editor told me that I might, in place of the casual paragraphs for the London Letter, do something good on the Vassiloff murder.

It was a night of cold rain, and the pavements were dashed with smears of light from the shop windows. Through the streaming streets my hansom leaped; and as I looked from the window, and noted the despondent biliousness of Bethnal Green, I realized that the grass withereth, the flower fadeth.

I dismissed the cab at Brick Lane, and, continuing the tradition which had been instilled into me by my predecessor on the London Letter, I turned into one of the hostelries and had a vodka to keep the cold out. Little Russia was shutting up. The old shawled women, who sit at every corner with huge baskets of black bread and sweet cakes, were departing beneath umbrellas. The stalls of Osborn Street, usually dressed with foreign-looking confectionery, were also retiring. Indeed, everybody seemed to be slinking away, and as I sipped my vodka, and felt it burn me with raw fire, I cursed news editors and all publics which desired to read about murders. I was perfectly sure that I shouldn't do the least good; so I had another, and gazed through the kaleidoscopic window, rushing with rain, at the cheerful world that held me.

Oh, so sad it is, this quarter! By day the streets are a depression, with their frowzy doss-houses and their vapor-baths. Gray and sickly is the light. Gray and sickly, too, are the leering shops, and gray and sickly are the people and the children. Everything has followed the grass and the flowers. Childhood has no place; so above the roofs you may see the surly points of a Council School. Such games as happen are played but listlessly, and each little face is smirched. The gaunt warehouses hardly support their lopping heads, and the low, beetling, gabled houses of the alleys seem for ever to brood on nights of bitter adventure. Fit objects for contempt by day they may be, but when night creeps upon London, the hideous darkness that can almost be touched, then their faces become very powers of terror, and the cautious soul, wandered from the comfort of the main streets, walks and walks in a frenzy, seeking outlet and finding none. Sometimes a hoarse laugh will break sharp on his ear. Then he runs.

Well, I finished my second, and then sauntered out. As I was passing a cruel-looking passage, a girl stepped forward. She looked at me. I looked at her. She had the haunting melancholy of Russia in her face, but her voice was as the voice of Cockaigne. For she spoke and said:--

"Funny-looking little guy, ain't you?"

I suppose I was. So I smiled and said: "We are as God made us, old girl."

She giggled....

I said I felt sure I should do no good on the Vassiloff murder. I didn't. For just then two of her friends came out of the court, each with a boy. It was apparent that she had no boy. I had no idea what the occasion might be, but the other four marched ahead, crying, "Come on!" And, surprised, yet knowing of no good reason for being surprised, I felt the girl's arm slip into mine, and we joined the main column....

That is one of London's greatest charms: it is always ready to toss you little encounters of this sort, if you are out for them.

Across the road we went, through mire and puddle, and down a long, winding court. At about midway our friends disappeared, and, suddenly drawn to the right, I was pushed from behind up a steep, fusty stair. Then I knew where we were going. We were going to the tenements where most of the Russians meet of an evening. The atmosphere in these places is a little more cheerful than that of the cafés--if you can imagine a Russian ever rising to cheerfulness. Most of the girls lodge over the milliners' shops, and thither their friends resort. Every establishment here has a piano, for music, with them, is a somber passion rather than a diversion. You will not hear comic opera, but if you want to climb the lost heights of melody, stand in Bell Yard, and listen to a piano, lost in the high glooms, wailing the heart of Chopin, or Rubinstein or Glazounoff through the fingers of pale, moist girls, while the ghost of Peter the Painter parades the naphtha'd highways.

At the top of the stair I was pushed into a dark, fusty room, and guided to a low, fusty sofa or bed. Then some one struck a match, and a lamp was lit and set on the mantelshelf. It flung a soft, caressing radiance on its shabby home, and on its mistress, and on the other girls and boys. The boys were tough youngsters of the district, evidently very much at home, smoking Russian cigarettes and settling themselves on the bed in a manner that seemed curiously continental in Cockney toughs. I doubt if you would have loved the girls at that moment; and yet ... you know ... their black or brassy hair, their untidiness, and the cotton blouses half-dropped from their tumultuous breasts....

The girl who had collared me disappeared for a moment, and then brought a tray of Russian tea. "Help 'selves, boys!" We did so, and, watching the others, I discovered that it was the correct thing to lemon the ladies' tea for them and stir it well and light their cigarettes. I did so for Katarina--that was her name--while she watched me with little truant locks of hair running everywhere, and a slow, alluring smile that seemed to hold all the agony and mystery of the steppes.

The room, on which the wallpaper hung in dank strips, contained a full-sized bed and a chair bedstead, a washstand, a samovar, a potpourri of a carpet, and certain mysteries of feminine toilet. A rickety three-legged table stood by the window, and Katarina's robes hung in a dainty riot of frill and color behind the door, which only shut when you thrust a peg of wood through a wired catch.

One of the boys sprawled himself, in clumsy luxury, on the bed, and his girl arranged herself at his side, and when she was settled her hair tumbled in a shower of hairpins, and everybody laughed like children. The other girl went to the piano, and her boy squatted on the floor at her feet.

She began to play.... You would not understand, I suppose, the intellectual emotion of the situation. It is more than curious to sit in these rooms, in the filthiest spot in London, and listen to Moszkowsky, Tchaikowsky, and Sibelius, played by a factory girl. It is ... something indefinable. I had visited similar places in Stepney before, but then I had not had a couple of vodkas, and I had not been taken in tow by an unknown girl. They play and play, while tea and cigarettes, and sometimes vodka or whisky, go round; and as the room gets warmer, so does one's sense of smell get sharper; so do the pale faces get moister; and so does one long more and more for a breath of cold air from the Ural Mountains. The best you can do is to ascend to the flat roof, and take a deep breath of Spitalfields ozone. Then back to the room for more tea and more music.

Sanya played.... Despite the unventilated room, the greasy appointments, and other details that would have turned the stomach of Kensington, that girl at the piano, her dress cunningly disarranged, playing, as no one would have dreamed she could play, the finer intensities of Wieniawski and Moussorgsky, shook all sense of responsibility from me. The burdens of life vanished. News editors and their assignments be damned. Enjoy yourself, was what the cold, insidious music said. Take your moments when the fates send them; that was life's best lesson. Snatch the joy of the fleeting moment. Why ponder on time and tears?

Devilish little fingers they were, Sanya's. Her technique was not perhaps all that it might have been; she might not have won the Gold Medal of our white-shirted academies, but she had enough temperament to make half a dozen Bechstein Hall virtuosi. From valse to nocturne, from sonata to prelude, her fancy ran. With crashing chords she dropped from "L'Automne Bacchanale" to the Nocturne in E flat; scarcely murmured of that, then tripped elvishly into Moszkowsky's Waltz, and from that she dropped to a song of Tchaikowsky, almost heartbreaking in its childish beauty, and then to the lecherous music of the second act of "Tristan." Mazurka, polonaise, and nocturne wailed in the stuffy chamber; her little hands lit up the enchanted gloom of the place with bright thrills, until the bed and the dingy surroundings faded into phantoms and left only two stark souls in colloquy: Katarina's and mine.

Katarina had settled, I forget how, on the sofa, and was reclining very comfortably with her head on my shoulder and both arms about me. We did not talk. No questions passed as to why we had picked one another up. There we were, warmed with vodka and tea, at eleven o'clock at night, five stories above the clamorous world, while her friend shook the silly souls out of us. With the shy boldness of my native country, I stretched a hand and inclosed her fingers. She smiled; a curious smile that no other girl in London could have given; not a flushed smile, or a startled smile, or a satisfied smile, or a coy smile; but a smile of companionship, which seemed to have realized the tragedy of our living. So it was that she had, by slow stages, reached her comfortable position, for as my hand wandered from finger to wrist, from wrist to soft, rounded arm, and so inclosed her neck, she slipped and buried me in an avalanche of flaming, scented tresses.

Sanya at the piano shot a glance over her shoulder, a very sad-gay glance; she laughed, curiously, I almost said foreignly. I felt somehow as though I had been taken complete possession of by these people. I hardly belonged to myself. Fleet Street was but a street of dream. I seemed now to be awake and in an adorable captivity.

With a final volley of chords, the pianist slid from the chair, and sat by her boy on the carpet, smoothing his face with tobacco-stained fingers, and languishing, while her thick, over-ripe lips took his kisses as a baby bird takes food from its mother.

We talked--all of us--in jerks and snatches. Then the oil in the lamp began to give out, and the room grew dim. Some one said: "Play something!" And some one said: "Too tired!" The girl reclining on the bed grew snappy. She did not lean for caresses. She seemed morose, preoccupied, almost impatient. Twice she snapped up her boy on a casual remark. I believe I talked vodka'd nonsense....

But suddenly there came a whisper of soft feet on the landing, and a secret tap at the door. Some one opened it, and slipped out. One heard the lazy hum of voices in busy conversation. Then silence; and some one entered the room and shut the door. One of the boys asked, casually, "What's up?" His question was not answered, but the girl who had gone to the door snapped something in a sharp tone which might have been either Russian or Yiddish. Katarina loosened herself from me, and sat up. The girl on the bed sat up. The three of them spat angry phrases about, I called over to one of the boys: "What's the joke? Anything wrong?" and received a reply: "Owshdiknow? I ain't a ruddy Russian, am I?"

Katarina suddenly drew back her flaming face. "Here," she said, "you better go."

"Go?"

"Yes--fathead! Go's what I said."

"But--" I began, looking and feeling like a flabbergasted cat.

"Don't I speak plain? Go!"

I suppose a man never feels a finer idiot than when a woman tells him she doesn't want him. If he ever does, it is when a woman tells him that she loves him. Katarina had given me the bullet, and, of course, I felt a fool; but I derived some consolation from the fact that the other boys were being told off. Clearly, big things were in the air, about to happen. Something, evidently, had already happened. I wondered.... Then I sat down on the sofa, and flatly told Katarina that I was not going unless I had a reason.

"Oh," she said, blithely, "ain't you? This is my room, ain't it? I brought you here, and you stay here just as long as I choose, and no longer. Who d'you think you are, saying you won't go? This is my room. I let you come here for a drink, and you just got to go when I say. See?"

I was about to make a second stand, when again there came a stealthy tap at the door, and the whispering of slippered feet. Sanya glided to the door, opened it, and disappeared. In a moment she came back, and called, "'Rina!" Katarina slipped from my embrace, went to the door, and disappeared too. One girl and three boys remained--in silence.

Next moment Katarina reappeared, and said something to Sanya. Sanya pulled her boy by the arm, and went out. The other girl pushed her boy at the neck and literally threw him out. Katarina came over to me, and said: "Go, little fool!"

I said: "Shan't unless I know what the game is."

She stood over me; glared; searched for words to meet the occasion; found none. She gestured. I sat as rigid as an immobile comedian. Finally, she flung her arms, and swept away. At the door she turned; "Blasted little fool! He'll do us both in if y'ain't careful. You don't know him. Both of us he'll have. Serveyeh right."

She disappeared. I was alone. I heard the _sup-sup_ of her slippered feet down the stair.

I got up, and moved to the door. I heard nothing. I stood by the window, my thoughts dancing a ragtime. I wondered what to do, and how, and whether. I wondered what was up exactly. I wondered ... well, I just wondered. My thoughts got into a tangle, sank, and swam, and sank again. Then there was a sudden struggle and spurt from the lamp, and it went black out. From a room across the landing a clock ticked menacingly. I saw, by the thin light from the window, the smoke of a discarded cigarette curling up and up to the ceiling like a snake.

I went again to the door, peered down the steep stair and over the crazy balustrade. Nobody was about; no voices. I slipped swiftly down the five flights, met nobody. I stood in the slobbered vestibule. From afar I heard the sluck of the waters against the staples of the wharves, and the wicked hoot of the tugs.

It was then that a sudden nameless fear seized me; it was that simple terror that comes from nothing but ourselves. I am not usually afraid of any man or thing. I am normally nervous, and there are three or four things that have power to terrify me. But I am not, I think, afraid. At that moment, however, I was afraid of everything: of the room I had left, of the house, of the people, of the inviting lights of the warehouses and the threatening shoals of the alleys.

I stood a moment longer. Then I raced into Brick Lane, and out into the brilliance of Commercial Street.

A WORD FOR AUTUMN

_By_ A. A. MILNE

This is the sort of urbane pleasantry in which British essayists
are prolific and graceful. Alan Alexander Milne was born in 1882,
went to Trinity College, Cambridge; was editor of _The Granta_ (the
leading undergraduate publication at Cambridge at that time); and
plunged into the great whirlpool of London journalism. He was on
the staff of _Punch_, 1906-14. He has now collected several volumes
of charming essays, and has had considerable success as a
playwright: his comedy, _Mr. Pim Passes By_, recently played a
prosperous run in New York. "A Word for Autumn" is from his volume
_Not That It Matters_.

Last night the waiter put the celery on with the cheese, and I knew that summer was indeed dead. Other signs of autumn there may be--the reddening leaf, the chill in the early-morning air, the misty evenings--but none of these comes home to me so truly. There may be cool mornings in July; in a year of drought the leaves may change before their time; it is only with the first celery that summer is over.

I knew all along that it would not last. Even in April I was saying that winter would soon be here. Yet somehow it had begun to seem possible lately that a miracle might happen, that summer might drift on and on through the months--a final upheaval to crown a wonderful year. The celery settled that. Last night with the celery autumn came into its own.

There is a crispness about celery that is of the essence of October. It is as fresh and clean as a rainy day after a spell of heat. It crackles pleasantly in the mouth. Moreover it is excellent, I am told, for the complexion. One is always hearing of things which are good for the complexion, but there is no doubt that celery stands high on the list. After the burns and freckles of summer one is in need of something. How good that celery should be there at one's elbow.

A week ago--("A little more cheese, waiter")--a week ago I grieved for the dying summer. I wondered how I could possibly bear the waiting--the eight long months till May. In vain to comfort myself with the thought that I could get through more work in the winter undistracted by thoughts of cricket grounds and country houses. In vain, equally, to tell myself that I could stay in bed later in the mornings. Even the thought of after-breakfast pipes in front of the fire left me cold. But now, suddenly, I am reconciled to autumn. I see quite clearly that all good things must come to an end. The summer has been splendid, but it has lasted long enough. This morning I welcomed the chill in the air; this morning I viewed the falling leaves with cheerfulness; and this morning I said to myself, "Why, of course, I'll have celery for lunch." ("More bread, waiter.")

"Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness," said Keats, not actually picking out celery in so many words, but plainly including it in the general blessings of the autumn. Yet what an opportunity he missed by not concentrating on that precious root. Apples, grapes, nuts, and vegetable marrows he mentions specially--and how poor a selection! For apples and grapes are not typical of any month, so ubiquitous are they, vegetable marrows are vegetables _pour rire_ and have no place in any serious consideration of the seasons, while as for nuts, have we not a national song which asserts distinctly, "Here we go gathering nuts in May"? Season of mists and mellow celery, then let it be. A pat of butter underneath the bough, a wedge of cheese, a loaf of bread and--Thou.

How delicate are the tender shoots unfolded layer by layer. Of what a whiteness is the last baby one of all, of what a sweetness his flavor. It is well that this should be the last rite of the meal--_finis coronat opus_--so that we may go straight on to the business of the pipe. Celery demands a pipe rather than a cigar, and it can be eaten better in an inn or a London tavern than in the home. Yes, and it should be eaten alone, for it is the only food which one really wants to hear oneself eat. Besides, in company one may have to consider the wants of others. Celery is not a thing to share with any man. Alone in your country inn you may call for the celery; but if you are wise you will see that no other traveler wanders into the room. Take warning from one who has learnt a lesson. One day I lunched alone at an inn, finishing with cheese and celery. Another traveler came in and lunched too. We did not speak--I was busy with my celery. From the other end of the table he reached across for the cheese. That was all right! it was the public cheese. But he also reached across for the celery--my private celery for which I owed. Foolishly--you know how one does--I had left the sweetest and crispest shoots till the last, tantalizing myself pleasantly with the thought of them. Horror! to see them snatched from me by a stranger. He realized later what he had done and apologized, but of what good is an apology in such circumstances? Yet at least the tragedy was not without its value. Now one remembers to lock the door.

Yes, I can face the winter with calm. I suppose I had forgotten what it was really like. I had been thinking of the winter as a horrid wet, dreary time fit only for professional football. Now I can see other things--crisp and sparkling days, long pleasant evenings, cheery fires. Good work shall be done this winter. Life shall be lived well. The end of the summer is not the end of the world. Here's to October--and, waiter, some more celery.

"A CLERGYMAN"

_By_ MAX BEERBOHM

Max Beerbohm, I dare say (and I believe it has been said before),
is the most subtly gifted English essayist since Charles Lamb. It
is not surprising that he has (now for many years) been referred to
as "the incomparable Max," for what other contemporary has never
once missed fire, never failed to achieve perfection in the field
of his choice? Whether in caricature, short story, fable, parody,
or essay, he has always been consummate in grace, tact, insouciant
airy precision. I hope you will not miss "No. 2 The Pines" (in _And
Even Now_, from which this selection also comes), a reminiscence of
his first visit to Swinburne in 1899. That beautiful (there is no
other word) essay shows an even ampler range of Mr. Beerbohm's
powers: a tenderness and lovely grace that remind one, almost
against belief, that the gay youth of the '90's now mellows
deliciously with the end of the fifth decade. He was so enormously
old in 1896, when he published his first book and called it his
_Works_; he seems much younger now: he is having his first
childhood.

This portrait of the unfortunate cleric annihilated by Dr. Johnson
is a triumphant example of the skill with which a perfect artist
can manœuver a trifle, carved like an ivory trinket; in such
hands, subtlety never becomes mere tenuity.

Max Beerbohm was born in London in 1872; studied at Charterhouse
School and Merton College, Oxford; and was a brilliant figure in
the _Savoy_ and _Yellow Book_ circles by the time he was
twenty-four. His genius is that of the essay in its purest
distillation: a clear cross-section of life as seen through the
lens of self; the pure culture (in the biological sense) of
observing personality.

I have often wondered how it came about (though the matter is
wholly nonpertinent) that Mr. Beerbohm married an American
lady--quite a habit with English essayists, by the way: Hilaire
Belloc and Bertrand Russell did likewise. _Who's Who_ says she was
from Memphis, which adds lustre to that admirable city.

He now lives in Italy.

Fragmentary, pale, momentary; almost nothing; glimpsed and gone; as it were, a faint human hand thrust up, never to reappear, from beneath the rolling waters of Time, he forever haunts my memory and solicits my weak imagination. Nothing is told of him but that once, abruptly, he asked a question, and received an answer.

This was on the afternoon of April 7th, 1778, at Streatham, in the well-appointed house of Mr. Thrale. Johnson, on the morning of that day, had entertained Boswell at breakfast in Bolt Court, and invited him to dine at Thrale Hall. The two took coach and arrived early. It seems that Sir John Pringle had asked Boswell to ask Johnson "what were the best English sermons for style." In the interval before dinner, accordingly, Boswell reeled off the names of several divines whose prose might or might not win commendation. "Atterbury?" he suggested. "JOHNSON: Yes, Sir, one of the best. BOSWELL: Tillotson? JOHNSON: Why, not now. I should not advise any one to imitate Tillotson's style; though I don't know; I should be cautious of censuring anything that has been applauded by so many suffrages.--South is one of the best, if you except his peculiarities, and his violence, and sometimes coarseness of language.--Seed has a very fine style; but he is not very theological. Jortin's sermons are very elegant. Sherlock's style, too, is very elegant, though he has not made it his principal study.--And you may add Smalridge. BOSWELL: I like Ogden's Sermons on Prayer very much, both for neatness of style and subtility of reasoning. JOHNSON: I should like to read all that Ogden has written. BOSWELL: What I want to know is, what sermons afford the best specimen of English pulpit eloquence. JOHNSON: We have no sermons addressed to the passions, that are good for anything; if you mean that kind of eloquence. A CLERGYMAN, whose name I do not recollect: Were not Dodd's sermons addressed to the passions? JOHNSON: They were nothing, Sir, be they addressed to what they may."

The suddenness of it! Bang!--and the rabbit that had popped from its burrow was no more.

I know not which is the more startling--the début of the unfortunate clergyman, or the instantaneousness of his end. Why hadn't Boswell told us there was a clergyman present? Well, we may be sure that so careful and acute an artist had some good reason. And I suppose the clergyman was left to take us unawares because just so did he take the company. Had we been told he was there, we might have expected that sooner or later he would join in the conversation. He would have had a place in our minds. We may assume that in the minds of the company around Johnson he had no place. He sat forgotten, overlooked; so that his self-assertion startled every one just as on Boswell's page it startles us. In Johnson's massive and magnetic presence only some very remarkable man, such as Mr. Burke, was sharply distinguishable from the rest. Others might, if they had something in them, stand out slightly. This unfortunate clergyman may have had something in him, but I judge that he lacked the gift of seeming as if he had. That deficiency, however, does not account for the horrid fate that befell him. One of Johnson's strongest and most inveterate feelings was his veneration for the Cloth. To any one in Holy Orders he habitually listened with a grace and charming deference. To-day, moreover, he was in excellent good humor. He was at the Thrales', where he so loved to be; the day was fine; a fine dinner was in close prospect; and he had had what he always declared to be the sum of human felicity--a ride in a coach. Nor was there in the question put by the clergyman anything likely to enrage him. Dodd was one whom Johnson had befriended in adversity; and it had always been agreed that Dodd in his pulpit was very emotional. What drew the blasting flash must have been not the question itself, but the manner in which it was asked. And I think we can guess what that manner was.

Say the words aloud: "Were not Dodd's sermons addressed to the passions?" They are words which, if you have any dramatic and histrionic sense, _cannot_ be said except in a high, thin voice.

You may, from sheer perversity, utter them in a rich and sonorous baritone or bass. But if you do so, they sound utterly unnatural. To make them carry the conviction of human utterance, you have no choice: you must pipe them.

Remember, now, Johnson was very deaf. Even the people whom he knew well, the people to whose voices he was accustomed, had to address him very loudly. It is probable that this unregarded, young, shy clergyman, when at length he suddenly mustered courage to 'cut in,' let his high, thin voice soar _too_ high, insomuch that it was a kind of scream. On no other hypothesis can we account for the ferocity with which Johnson turned and rended him. Johnson didn't, we may be sure, mean to be cruel. The old lion, startled, just struck out blindly. But the force of paw and claws was not the less lethal. We have endless testimony to the strength of Johnson's voice; and the very cadence of those words, "They were nothing, Sir, be they addressed to what they may," convinces me that the old lion's jaws never gave forth a louder roar. Boswell does not record that there was any further conversation before the announcement of dinner. Perhaps the whole company had been temporarily deafened. But I am not bothering about them. My heart goes out to the poor dear clergyman exclusively.

I said a moment ago that he was young and shy; and I admit that I slipped those epithets in without having justified them to you by due process of induction. Your quick mind will have already supplied what I omitted. A man with a high, thin voice, and without power to impress any one with a sense of his importance, a man so null in effect that even the retentive mind of Boswell did not retain his very name, would assuredly not be a self-confident man. Even if he were not naturally shy, social courage would soon have been sapped in him, and would in time have been destroyed, by experience. That he had not yet given himself up as a bad job, that he still had faint wild hopes, is proved by the fact that he did snatch the opportunity for asking that question. He must, accordingly, have been young. Was he the curate of the neighboring church? I think so. It would account for his having been invited. I see him as he sits there listening to the great Doctor's pronouncement on Atterbury and those others. He sits on the edge of a chair in the background. He has colorless eyes, fixed earnestly, and a face almost as pale as the clerical bands beneath his somewhat receding chin. His forehead is high and narrow, his hair mouse-colored. His hands are clasped tight before him, the knuckles standing out sharply. This constriction does not mean that he is steeling himself to speak. He has no positive intention of speaking. Very much, nevertheless, is he wishing in the back of his mind that he could say something--something whereat the great Doctor would turn on him and say, after a pause for thought, "Why, yes, Sir. That is most justly observed" or "Sir, this has never occurred to me. I thank you"--thereby fixing the observer forever high in the esteem of all. And now in a flash the chance presents itself. "We have," shouts Johnson, "no sermons addressed to the passions, that are good for anything." I see the curate's frame quiver with sudden impulse, and his mouth fly open, and--no, I can't bear it, I shut my eyes and ears. But audible, even so, is something shrill, followed by something thunderous.

Presently I reopen my eyes. The crimson has not yet faded from that young face yonder, and slowly down either cheek falls a glistening tear. Shades of Atterbury and Tillotson! Such weakness shames the Established Church. What would Jortin and Smalridge have said?--what Seed and South? And, by the way, who _were_ they, these worthies? It is a solemn thought that so little is conveyed to us by names which to the palæo-Georgians conveyed so much. We discern a dim, composite picture of a big man in a big wig and a billowing black gown, with a big congregation beneath him. But we are not anxious to hear what he is saying. We know it is all very elegant. We know it will be printed and be bound in finely-tooled full calf, and no palæo-Georgian gentleman's library will be complete without it. Literate people in those days were comparatively few; but, bating that, one may say that sermons were as much in request as novels are to-day. I wonder, will mankind continue to be capricious? It is a very solemn thought indeed that no more than a hundred-and-fifty years hence the novelists of our time, with all their moral and political and sociological outlook and influence, will perhaps shine as indistinctly as do those old preachers, with all their elegance, now. "Yes, Sir," some great pundit may be telling a disciple at this moment, "Wells is one of the best. Galsworthy is one of the best, if you except his concern for delicacy of style. Mrs. Ward has a very firm grasp of problems, but is not very creational.--Caine's books are very edifying. I should like to read all that Caine has written. Miss Corelli, too, is very edifying.--And you may add Upton Sinclair." "What I want to know," says the disciple, "is, what English novels may be selected as specially enthralling." The pundit answers: "We have no novels addressed to the passions that are good for anything, if you mean that kind of enthralment." And here some poor wretch (whose name the disciple will not remember) inquires: "Are not Mrs. Glyn's novels addressed to the passions?" and is in due form annihilated. Can it be that a time will come when readers of this passage in our pundit's Life will take more interest in the poor nameless wretch than in all the bearers of those great names put together, being no more able or anxious to discriminate between (say) Mrs. Ward and Mr. Sinclair than we are to set Ogden above Sherlock, or Sherlock above Ogden? It seems impossible. But we must remember that things are not always what they seem.

Every man illustrious in his day, however much he may be gratified by his fame, looks with an eager eye to posterity for a continuance of past favors, and would even live the remainder of his life in obscurity if by so doing he could insure that future generations would preserve a correct attitude towards him forever. This is very natural and human, but, like so many very natural and human things, very silly. Tillotson and the rest need not, after all, be pitied for our neglect of them. They either know nothing about it, or are above such terrene trifles. Let us keep our pity for the seething mass of divines who were not elegantly verbose, and had no fun or glory while they lasted. And let us keep a specially large portion for one whose lot was so much worse than merely undistinguished. If that nameless curate had not been at the Thrales' that day, or, being there, had kept the silence that so well became him, his life would have been drab enough, in all conscience. But at any rate an unpromising career would not have been nipped in the bud. And that is what in fact happened, I'm sure of it. A robust man might have rallied under the blow. Not so our friend. Those who knew him in infancy had not expected that he would be reared. Better for him had they been right. It is well to grow up and be ordained, but not if you are delicate and very sensitive, and shall happen to annoy the greatest, the most stentorian and roughest of contemporary personages. "A Clergyman" never held up his head or smiled again after the brief encounter recorded for us by Boswell. He sank into a rapid decline. Before the next blossoming of Thrale Hall's almond trees he was no more. I like to think that he died forgiving Dr. Johnson.

SAMUEL BUTLER: DIOGENES OF THE VICTORIANS

_By_ STUART P. SHERMAN

Professor Sherman's cold compress, applied to the Butler cult,
caused much suffering in some regions, where it was said to be more
than a cooling bandage--in fact, a wet blanket. In the general
rough-and-tumble among critical standards during recent years, Mr.
Sherman is one of those who have dealt some swinging blows in favor
of the Victorians and the literary Old Guard--which was often
square but rarely hollow.

Stuart Pratt Sherman, born in Iowa in 1881, graduated from Williams
in 1903, has been since 1911 professor of English at the University
of Illinois. His own account of his adventures, written without
intended publication, is worth consideration. He says:

"My life hasn't been quite as dryly 'academic,' nor as simply
'middle-Western,' as the record indicates. For example: I lived in
Los Angeles from my 5th to my 13th year, and then went on a seven
months' adventure in gold mining in the Black Cañon of Arizona,
where I had some experience with drouth in the desert, etc. That is
not 'literary.'

"Recently, I've been thinking I might write a little paper about
some college friends at Williams. I was in college with Harry James
Smith (author of _Mrs. Bumpstead Lee_), Max Eastman, and
'Go-to-Hell' Whittlesey. As editor of the _Williams Monthly_ I have
accepted and rejected manuscripts of both the two latter, and have
reminiscences of their literary youth.

"Then I spent a summer in the _Post_ and _Nation_ in 1908, which is
a pleasant chapter to remember; another summer teaching at
Columbia; this past summer teaching at the University of
California. My favorite recreations are climbing little mountains,
chopping wood, and canoeing on Lake Michigan.

"This summer I have been picking out a place to die in--or rather
looking over the sites offered in California. I lean towards the
high Sierras, up above the Yosemite Valley.

"My ambition in life is to retire--perhaps at the age of
seventy--and write only for amusement. When I can abandon the task
of improving my contemporaries, I hope to become a popular
author."

Professor Sherman, you will note, is almost an exact contemporary
of H. L. Mencken, with whom he has crossed swords in more than one
spirited encounter; and Sherman is likely to give as good as he
takes in such scuffles, or even rather better. It is high time that
his critical sagacity and powerful reasoning were better known in
the market-place.

UNTIL I met the Butlerians I used to think that the religious spirit in our times was very precious, there was so little of it. I thought one should hold one's breath before it as before the flicker of one's last match on a cold night in the woods. "What if it should go out?" I said; but my apprehension was groundless. It can never go out. The religious spirit is indestructible and constant in quantity like the sum of universal energy in which matches and suns are alike but momentary sparkles and phases. This great truth I learned of the Butlerians: Though the forms and objects of religious belief wax old as a garment and are changed, faith, which is, after all, the precious thing, endures forever. Destroy a man's faith in God and he will worship humanity; destroy his faith in humanity and he will worship science; destroy his faith in science and he will worship himself; destroy his faith in himself and he will worship Samuel Butler.

What makes the Butlerian cult so impressive is, of course, that Butler, poor dear, as the English say, was the least worshipful of men. He was not even--till his posthumous disciples made him so--a person of any particular importance. One writing a private memorandum of his death might have produced something like this: Samuel Butler was an unsociable, burry, crotchety, obstinate old bachelor, a dilettante in art and science, an unsuccessful author, a witty cynic of inquisitive temper and, comprehensively speaking, the unregarded Diogenes of the Victorians. Son of a clergyman and grandson of a bishop, born in 1835, educated at Cambridge, he began to prepare for ordination. But, as we are told, because of scruples regarding infant baptism he abandoned the prospect of holy orders and in 1859 sailed for New Zealand, where with capital supplied by his father he engaged in sheep-farming for five years. In 1864, returning to England with £8,000, he established himself for life at Clifford's Inn, London. He devoted some years to painting, adored Handel and dabbled in music, made occasional trips to Sicily and Italy, and wrote a dozen books, which generally fell dead from the press, on religion, literature, art and scientific theory. "Erewhon," however, a Utopian romance published in 1872, had by 1899 sold between three and four thousand copies. Butler made few friends and apparently never married. He died in 1902. His last words were: "Have you brought the cheque book, Alfred?" His body was cremated and the ashes were buried in a garden by his biographer and his man-servant, with nothing to mark the spot.

Butler's indifference to the disposal of his earthly part betokens no contempt for fame. Denied contemporary renown, he had firmly set his heart on immortality, and quietly, persistently, cannily provided for it. If he could not go down to posterity by the suffrage of his countrymen, he would go down by the shrewd use of his cheque book; he would buy his way in. He bought the publication of most of the books produced in his lifetime. He diligently prepared manuscripts for posthumous publication and accumulated and arranged great masses of materials for a biographer. He insured an interest in his literary remains by bequeathing them and all his copyrights to his literary executor, R. A. Streatfeild. He purchased an interest in a biographer by persuading Henry Festing Jones, a feckless lawyer of Butlerian proclivities, to abandon the law and become his musical and literary companion. In return for these services Mr. Jones received between 1887 and 1900 an allowance of £200 a year, and at Butler's death a bequest of £500, the musical copyrights and the manifest responsibility and privilege of assisting Streatfeild with the propagation of Butler's fame, together with their own, in the next generation.

These good and faithful servants performed their duties with exemplary zeal and astuteness. In 1903, the year following the Master's death, Streatfeild published "The Way of All Flesh," a book packed with satirical wit, the first since "Erewhon" which was capable of walking off on its own legs and exciting general curiosity about its author--curiosity intensified by the announcement that the novel had been written between 1872 and 1884. In the wake of this sensation there began the systematic annual relaunching of old works, with fresh introductions and memoirs and a piecemeal feeding out of other literary remains, culminating in 1917 with the publication of "The Note-Books," a skilful collection and condensation of the whole of Butler's intellectual life. Meanwhile, in 1908, the Erewhon dinner had been instituted. In spite of mild deprecation, this feast, with its two toasts to his Majesty and to the memory of Samuel Butler, assumed from the outset the aspect of a solemn sacrament of believers. Among these was conspicuous on the second occasion Mr. George Bernard Shaw, not quite certain, perhaps, whether he had come to give or to receive honor, whether he was himself to be regarded as the beloved disciple or rather as the one for whom Butler, preaching in the Victorian wilderness, had prepared the way with "free and future-piercing suggestions."

By 1914 Streatfeild was able to declare that no fragment of Butler's was too insignificant to publish. In 1915 and 1916 appeared extensive critical studies by Gilbert Cannan and John F. Harris. In 1919 at last arrives Henry Festing Jones with the authoritative memoir in two enormous volumes with portraits, documents, sumptuous index, elaborate bibliography and a pious accounting to the public for the original manuscripts, which have been deposited like sacred relics at St. John's College, the Bodleian, the British Museum, the Library of Congress and at various shrines in Italy and Sicily. Here are materials for a fresh consideration of the man in relation to his work.

The unconverted will say that such a monument to such a man is absurdly disproportionate. But Butler is now more than a man. He is a spiritual ancestor, leader of a movement, moulder of young minds, founder of a faith. His monument is designed not merely to preserve his memory but to mark as well the present importance of the Butlerian sect. The memoir appears to have been written primarily for them. The faithful will no doubt find it delicious; and I, though an outsider, got through it without fatigue and with a kind of perverse pleasure in its perversity.